Trouble at the chalkface

THE new education secretary may well have raised a glass after his appointment, but there are many who will consider he was drinking from a poisoned chalice. Even opposition politicians who called for Fiona Hyslop to be sacked last week, having achieved their goal, were later to be heard almost leaping to her defence. It was a failure of policy, not of the individual, they cried in the parliament's main crucible.

Yet Michael Russell's name has been linked with the job for some time and he has a long interest in education, notwithstanding the fact that he is married to a primary head teacher. Indeed, during his time in exile, when he lost his parliamentary seat, he was a regular contributor to the Times Educational Supplement Scotland.

It is just as well, then, that Russell is known as a politician who relishes a challenge. After all, he took on the formidable, and some might say doomed, task of opposing Alex Salmond in the race for the party leadership in 2004

His new brief certainly promises battles. When it comes to education, he has revealed himself to be a radical thinker, and there have already been threats that schools could be removed from local authority control.

His predecessor Hyslop was well known for maintaining good relations within the sector, even though at times, particularly post-Budget, animosities threatened to get out of control. The university principals were widely expected to lash out after receiving a fraction of the 168 million they said was needed over three years. A Joint Future Thinking Taskforce was a clever solution, allowing both sides to save face, by ostensibly holding government to account while at the same presenting Hyslop as a caring, listening minister.

Despite the promises to pay student debt being quietly dropped post-election and moves to increase grants being acknowledged as a drop in the ocean, Hyslop never quite lost the support of the student body. And teachers, despite lack of progress on reducing class sizes and failure to maintain teacher numbers, never quite lost patience with her.

But relationships may be about to take a turn for the worse. The South of Scotland MSP has a bullish reputation for dealing with contentious issues. His previous role as culture minister included tackling the referendum for independence – given his position in a minority government outflanked and outnumbered by unionist parties, this was not a job for the fainthearted.

So Russell's appointment may be an indication of confrontations to come. Last Friday the Scottish Government's spin doctors were frantically phoning around the media, indicating a willingness to wrest control of schools away from the councils. It is well known the Scottish Government has become increasingly frustrated by the reluctance of some local bodies to toe the line.

A new funding arrangement, known as the concordat, removed restrictions on the way local authorities spent the money allocated to them, in return for freezing council tax and working towards government priorities such as reducing class sizes and maintaining teacher numbers.

Labour-dominated Glasgow, in particular, as Scotland's biggest and possible most powerful council, refused to accept that reducing class sizes was the most cost-effective way to improve education. That, and similar action by other councils, led to Ronnie Smith, leader of the EIS, Scotland's biggest teaching union, calling for the government to act at the union's annual conference in June.

It is a position he maintains today. Although the union doesn't have a policy either way on greater centralisation for schools, the councils cannot take comfort. Few people, even education directors, are deeply concerned about the threat to council hegemony over schools.

John Stodter, general secretary of the Association of Directors of Education (ADES), said: "We would take an objective stance on it. We are not too interested in the politics of it. We are not bothered about who ultimately has the power and control. We would speak up for education and children."

That's a sentiment echoed by Smith and both agree some action is needed.

Stodter added: "Clearly there is a gap just now between Scottish government policy, strategy and intention, and what's actually happening on the ground in schools, so clearly something has to give in order to bring these together to have an effective and an efficient system."

Secondary teachers go further. For decades, they have been clear that they believe schools should be taken out of council control.

Jim Docherty, depute general secretary of the Scottish Secondary Teachers' Association, has been calling for the dramatic change since the 1990s when the Conservatives oversaw the splitting of eight Scottish regional councils into 32 local authorities in a bid to gain control over local government.

He believes in a board system along the NHS or police model, where a variety of people, including elected councillors, run education.

He said: "Under board control, politics would take a back seat. It would take education out of council control. It wouldn't be one board per council, certainly a maximum of 20. We used to have eight directors of education, we now have 32. It's a little bit naive to expect we can move overnight from eight local authorities to 23 and not expect some kind of skills gap.

"It is, we believe, the way forward and would deal with what, quite frankly, are underperforming local authorities. We would see that as a significant step forward."

Last night Russell indicated his commitment to "resetting" the relationship between councils and central government.

He said: "On any school day in Scotland there are hundreds of thousands of pupils being taught by tens of thousands of teachers in thousands of good schools. That is our strength. And we must build on our strengths.

"Of course we have challenges in certain areas of education. That's why the Scottish Government will continue to do all it can to make the good things even better and tackle the areas in need of improvement.

"Investing a record amount of money in education, despite the cuts from the UK Government, at a time of economic uncertainty is a clear demonstration of our commitment to equip our young people with the skills they need for the future.

"If we are going to achieve our goal, the very best for Scotland's children, an open mind to all sensible ideas and alternatives is essential."

Council leaders, unsurprisingly, balk at any suggestion of losing control and the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities (Cosla) take comfort from the fact that the idea has not been openly acknowledged by the Scottish Government.

Isabel Hutton, education spokeswoman for Cosla, said "It's certainly not the view of Cosla that the best way forward is to centralise education. It's always been our view that education should be delivered locally and be accountable locally."

She suggested the whole idea of reconfiguring local governance was highly unlikely given the enormous changes already ongoing in education, including the new school curriculum, national school building programme and early years strategy.

She said: "I don't think even practically it could be something they would be considering in the short term"

So was this simply a threat by the government to get those renegade local authorities to conform? "It would be up to government to say whether it is a warning shot or not," she said.

"Since the concordat was signed, class sizes have come down at record levels. They might not have come down to 18 but they have come down from 30 to 25, some from 25 to 20, but not necessarily the magic number of 18 so local government has certainly delivered on its side.

"It was always recognised it was something that wouldn't be done overnight. There were no extra resources put in specifically to reduce class sizes."

She rejected the idea of ditching the concordat and returning to ring-fenced funding, saying councils needed flexibility to adapt to their own needs rather than being put in a financial "straitjacket".

For his part, Russell has been racking up his ministerial phone bill. He is understood to have been arranging meetings with all of Scotland's 32 council leaders. He has already met with Cosla bosses, and notably with Finance Secretary John Swinney, clearly recognising the fundamental importance of the concordat in future negotiations.

The EIS general-secretary, Smith, has written to Russell asking for an urgent meeting to discuss certain issues, including class sizes, a key topic for the union.

Smith said councils could not depend on the support of teachers. "We've traditionally been supportive of local authorities on education but they cannot take it for granted that we would always support their role in school provision," he said.

"Our position is we would pretty much go wherever we can get the best deal for education, and if local authorities fail to do that then teachers are more interested in getting a good deal for education than having an ideological commitment to local authority control as the only way of doing it. We are really quite open-minded about the arrangements."

And he agreed any shift in power was unlikely before the next Scottish parliamentary elections.

He said: "As far as we are concerned we have a current government with a current set of promises we would like to see delivered and we shouldn't lose sight of that fact.

"The discussion about structure, bluntly, has come on to the agenda because of the behaviour of a number of local authorities in Scotland.

"They brought their role in education into question, they brought it on their own heads."